David Megginson wrote:
>
> Ralph R. Swick writes:
>
> > At the present time, the XML language specifications do not
> > endorse any use of a namespace URI other than string
> > comparison with other namespace URIs. The RDF designers
> > asserted from the beginning that we wanted to use URIs to
> > their fullest , not just as strings to be compared. That is, RDF
> > _expects_ that any URI can be presented to the Web for resolution.
>
> Clearly, it hasn't worked
Huh? I use it all the time; so do lots of other folks.
It works fine. What problem(s) are you referring to?
> -- this is the part of RDF that most needs
> to be changed in any future revision of the spec, if Tim B-L can be
> persuaded to abandon his well-entrenched position on this issue.
As if Tim B-L is the only one who believes that the Web
should work like it does? Lots of people expect that
the best place to find info about
http://example.org/foo#bar
is, in fact, http://example.org/foo#bar
> If URIs (especially resource identifiers) can be resolved, then one
> particular set of statements -- the RDF document the URI resolves to
> -- is always going to be priviledged over the other statements about
> the same resource/entity/object/topic/frame/thing.
Exactly. That's how it works: the web, the world, etc.
> If the so-called semantic web has any value at all, it's in the
> plurality of voices: *anyone* should be able to make statements about
> David Bowie, the W3C, Alabama, or Structuralism,
yes, but...
> no one's statements
> should be privileged,
Why not? If you want to know what my favorite color is,
surely an answer from me is privileged over an answer
from, say, someone who hardly knows me.
> and all parties should be able to use the same
> identifier in doing so. RDF isn't DNS.
>
> > I acknowledge that, strictly speaking, opacity and concatenation
> > are in conflict.
>
> My objections above aside, under the current state of the RDF-Syntax
> spec, it is not possible to write robust, interoperable software
> because of the concatenation of the Namespace URI with the local name
> -- this is a pragmatic engineering problem, not an abstract one.
Er... I'm looking at piles of robust, interoperable software
that uses URIs in this fashion.
http://www.w3.org/RDF/#developershttp://www.w3.org/XML/Schema#Tools
--
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/